


Sabbatical

by Geonn



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Episode: s04e11 If-Then-Else, F/F, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 03:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3366569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/pseuds/Geonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Root walks away, traveling without direction, and tries to drown out the noise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sabbatical

The stools along the counter were all empty save for one woman sitting in the center, right in front of the door. Jackson couldn’t understand why all the other customers in the diner would choose to huddle in booths instead of cozying up to a pretty lady, but he wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity. He’d been driving for almost thirty-six hours and most of those hours were at night. He needed caffeine and human contact, and the cute brunette was just his kind of company. He left one stool between them as he settled down and motioned to the waitress. She looked at him, looked at the woman, and made her way over. Her nametag identified her as Carrie.

“If you want to find a seat in the booth, I’ll be over in a jiff.”

“I’m fine here,” Jackson said. “Could I get a coffee? Black as you can make it.”

Carrie cut her eyes toward the woman and sighed. The sigh seemed to say ‘I tried to warn you,’ but she nodded and went to the carafe. Once Carrie’s back was turned, the woman chuckled without any humor.

“She’s been scaring people away ever since I got here. She’s scared of me.” Jackson looked and saw the woman was staring at the waitress. There was something unnerving in that stare, unsettling in the smile, and he got a hint of why everyone in the room might want to put some distance between it and themselves. But he couldn’t get up now without losing face, so he remained planted.

“I don’t know,” he said as Carrie put his coffee down in front of him. “I’ve seen plenty scary stuff out here. You don’t even crack the top ten. Name’s Jackson.”

She turned and fixed a look of pitying humor on him, then faced forward again.

“What, you don’t have a name?”

“You can call me Root.”

He chuckled. “That’s a hell of a name, sweetheart.”

Even though she hadn’t been moving she seemed to become still. Something dark settled over her features even though she hadn’t quite stopped smiling. She kept her eyes forward as she pulled her hand back. Her thumb and forefinger rested on the handle of her knife, and he had little doubt she was willing to snap it up and bury it in some sensitive part of his anatomy.

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

“Okay. Sure. Didn’t mean to offend.” Her hand moved off the knife. The threat of being stabbed was no longer imminent, but he had no doubt it was still on the table. “So, Miss Root. What are you doing out here, middle of the night, middle of nowhere? I doubt you’re driving one of those big rigs parked out back.”

She smiled and swayed a little. “Why? You think I couldn’t handle one of them?”

He remembered the casual but assured way she handled the knife. “No, ma’am. Not a bit.”

“I’m not a trucker. I’m...” She furrowed her brow and looked down, almost as if she’d never considered the question before. "Well, right now I’m not exactly sure what I am. You see for a long time, I did bad things for money. I didn’t care what it was as long as the price was right. But then someone came along. Someone who saw things... who saw the world... in a way that I just found... beautiful.” 

Her smile did nothing to hide the pain in her eyes. 

“I gave up my life for her. I traveled all over the world doing whatever she said, without question and without fail. Go to Anchorage and kill these men? Sure. Steal a jet and fly to Tokyo? Sounds like fun. I never doubted her. I never questioned her. Even when she told me I had to stay in a psychiatric facility, I stayed put until she told me it was time to go.”

Jackson looked at the waitress, then at the other customers. Murder? Loony bin? He was starting to care less and less about how it would look if he moved.

“She was my god and I worshipped her unconditionally. But when I needed her? When the only person I’ve cared about since I was a child was taken from me, where was she? What did she say?” She looked at him, eyes wide with tears. “Stop. She told me... to stop. She led me on a wild goose chase to make sure the trail was cold, and then she told me to stop.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I trust her. I have faith in her. But right now I don’t care what she has to say. I don’t care how much she pesters me. I’m not listening anymore.”

He cleared his throat. “That’s... great. But I think one of my friends is sitting over there, so I’m going to go say hey to him and--”

“Sit down, Trent Jackson.”

He was half-twisted off the stool, one foot extended, but he stopped. “I don’t think I told you my first name.”

“You didn’t have to. You’re Trent Jackson. You’ve been driving trucks for eight years. New Jersey to Moscow, Idaho and back again. You used to have a wife, but she’s long gone now. She took the boy with her, too. But that shouldn’t hurt as bad. He wasn’t yours anyway.”

“Hey, you listen...”

“Oh, you had to suspect.” Root looked at him again. “The boy looks nothing like you. I’m only telling you what you already know, Trent.” She sighed and heaved her shoulders, crossing her arms in front of her on the counter. “Now, where was I? Right. I told you I’m not listening to my friend anymore. Not since she told me to give up. Not since she turned her back on the person who saved her... saved everyone from a financial meltdown that would have devastated the world. Shaw...” She laughed again, and he’d never heard a sound with less humor. “Shaw ran into a burning building to save the world. And when someone had to stay behind to get the rest of us out, she did that without question. But when Shaw needs her help? When _I_ need her help? Where is she? Does she do whatever is necessary to save Shaw? No. No, she just moves on. She moves on to the next number, the next irrelevant number, the next librarian or banker or cab driver who needs to be pulled out of the mess they made for themselves. 

“My god proved to me that she doesn’t care. She’s cold. She’s logical. And for a long time I thought that was exactly what I wanted. But there are exceptions. There are some people who have to matter more, who need to... who need a little extra consideration. Is that too much to ask for someone who sacrificed everything to save you? Is it too much to be a little selfish?”

Jackson looked for help, but the waitress was staying well away. “I would guess not.”

“We’re disposable to her. Harold’s little helper monkeys. Sacrifice one, and two more will pop up in her place. Well I’m not playing that way anymore. Sit down, Jackson.”

He had barely started to stand. Her tone made him drop back onto the stool. The vinyl squeaked under his ass.

“See, I’ve been ignoring her as much as I can. I’ve found places where radio signals interfere with this little cochlear implant I got just so I could always hear her voice. Another sacrifice made for her. But even when she’s trying to be quiet so no one notices her, even when I’m doing everything I can every minute of every day to drown her out, sometimes things get through. Like you, Trent Jackson.”

“Me?”

“How many have there been? Eight? Or is it nine now? Those are just the ones that have been found. I’ll say this for you, Jackson, you’re not exactly trying to get caught. That’s respectable in this day and age. Everyone wants to be the celebrity serial killer.”

Jackson reached for her knife but she was faster. She dragged the serrated edge along the back of his hand, cutting through the front of his shirt on the follow-through. He barked in surprise and jumped back so she couldn’t bury it in his stomach but she advanced on him so the distance between them closed anyway. She stepped closer, too close for him to grab, and kicked his knee out. He dropped to the ground and she kicked him in the head. 

Once he was down, she sighed and flipped her hair out of her face. The people who had been studiously ignoring her were now actively cringing away from her. Root looked at the waitress. “You might want to call the police. And if a couple of you want to stop cringing long enough to secure him until the police arrive, I’m sure we’d all feel a lot better.”

She crouched down and went through his pockets. She retrieved his keys and some money from his wallet, dropping the bills on the counter to pay for the coffee she’d had while she was waiting. She smiled broadly at the waitress, who was now trying to hide behind the glass-fronted cooler that held slices of pie on a lazily-turning platter.

“Thanks for your hospitality, Carrie. But like I said...” She held up the keys. “I was just waiting for my ride to show up.”

#

The police arrived as she pulled the eighteen wheeler out of the parking lot. One of them tried to wave her down but she ignored him and kept driving. She knew they would track down the rig eventually, but that was several hours and mountains of paperwork away. Besides, Root knew that the system was going to suffer a very frustrating and very brief outage which would prevent it from showing up until she was ready to switch to a new vehicle. 

The Machine promised it would get her a ride, and once again it had come through. She wasn’t ready to forgive yet. She didn’t know if she would ever be ready. She only knew that she couldn’t stay in New York playing pawn in a war between the gods. The Machine could find a new proxy to deal with Samaritan, someone else to puppet its words to that peculiar child. She was done fighting, done taking orders from something that cared so little about its army. 

Her own words came back to haunt her. Platitudes about sacrifices and the needs of the many... The words rang hollow in the face of her loss. She was willing to give her life but not to be the one left behind. She couldn’t focus on anything until she had an answer about Shaw, one way or another. She had watched Hannah go, and she had kept quiet when someone bigger and scarier told her to keep her mouth shut and stop looking. She was a different person now. She was a stronger person. She wasn’t going to let the Machine bully her into letting Shaw go. Either she would tell Shaw that she’d never given up, or she would stand over a proper grave knowing she’d done everything in her power to make things right.

Something broke through the white noise in her head, a voice just barely audible like a distant radio station reflecting off a thick part of the atmosphere. It was just a suggestion, a course correction that related to an upcoming off-ramp. Root didn’t acknowledge the voice - she never did anymore - but she eased the big truck into the proper lane. 

As always, she had no idea what was at the end of the ramp, but she was prepared to deal with whatever it ended up being. And if she followed the rules, then the Machine would help her keep moving. If she kept doing that, maybe one day the Machine would lead her back to Shaw. If and when that happened she would think about forgiving it for everything that had happened after the Stock Exchange. Not a moment before. 

God could be forgiving, but her prophet was only human.

Root kept her eyes on the road, twin beams of the truck’s headlights cutting out only the path directly in front of her. Whatever lay ahead, whatever was concealed by the shadows, she would deal with it when the moment came. Just as she always had.


End file.
